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The fantasy of him fucking my ass suspended me somewhere between resentment and need. Resentment of his vow and a thrilling need for him to break it. I was torn. Should I shut this down? Or molest him until his rosary burned a hole through his pocket?

“Roark—”

“I want that.” He buried his face in the curve of my neck and groaned. “I want to feel wha’ it’s like to fill ye there.”

Oh, my dirty, dirty priest. His religious beliefs gave him precepts to follow, a sense of structure to live a moral life during a time of terrible violence. But the precepts he’d made for himself forbid anal sex. Which baffled my mind since he regularly, albeit guiltily, fucked my mouth.

I slid a hand over the tangle of dreads and braids and stroked the skin on his temple. “You fill me in other ways. Important ways. Like my heart.”

“It’s not enough. Not for me. I lay beside ye every night, connected to your body, aching. A man’s ache. Doc is gone. And Jesse…” He paused, considering, then moved his mouth to my ear. “I wish that I had Jesse’s girl.”

“What? I’m not—” Oh my Rick Springfield. I narrowed my eyes, unable to hold back my grin. “How long have you been waiting to use that line?”

“Too long.” He smiled. “Seriously though, I have ye all to myself now.” Leaning down, he pulled my lip between his teeth and released it. “I’ll have ye again, love. I’m not as obedient as ye might believe.”

My lungs stuck together, laboring against the thickness of the humid air and the strain in his voice. I’d grown used to the constant tension between us, accepted his self-imposed rules, and presumed sex-without-intercourse was the forever future of our relationship.

But since Michio had left, there wasn’t a night I slept without Roark, held tight in his big arms, his erection trapped between our bodies. He was a torment and a refuge. A tempter and a protector. A solid, defined boundary between right and wrong. I was so grateful for every moment I had with him, but I didn’t want to be the reason for his fall from God.

I unraveled my body from his and took a couple steps back. “You ever get the feeling that no matter what our intent is, no matter how hard we try to follow our own convictions, it’s all pointless? Like all the plans in the universe have already been determined, and the decisions we make mean nothing? Like we can’t stop what’s coming because the very energy that forms the molecules in the air, in the ground, in us, are already set on an unwavering path that ends in devastation?”

Okay, maybe I was feeling a little defeated lately. Or maybe it was just the wretched heat getting to me.

“It’s called the Great Tribulation, love.” He reached out, hooked a thumb in my belt loop, and yanked me against him. “The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke predicted the abomination of desolation and fleeing to the mountains during a time of terror, famines, and deadly disease. ‘Tis written that the scourge will affect pregnancies and children and spread throughout the flesh, save for the elect.”

Ugh. He was talking about the End Times, the return of Christ. I didn’t like what that implied.

I took a deep breath, chasing away the cringe in my shoulders. “The elect are the chosen, right? The believers? We both know I’m not a member.”

All this biblical talk was putting me on edge.

“Doesn’t matter what ye believe.” He placed his lips against the juncture of my neck and shoulder. “Ye survived, untouched by disease, an example of God’s grace. You’re the Mother of the living.”

I could argue Shea and Elaine were candidates for that role, but my voice escaped me as his hand freed the button of my jean shorts, slipped beneath the zipper, and cupped the sensitive skin between my legs. A shiver surged through me, and my inner muscles squeezed, empty, hungry.

“God portioned your heart like water,” he breathed against my neck, “so your guardians may share the chalice.”

“Pretty words for such a filthy mouth.” I gripped his huge shoulders and crashed my lips onto his, tasting salt and sweat and the delicious familiarity of Irish whiskey.

His fingers plunged exactly where I wanted him, and the tingling invasion rippled through my entire body. He shifted us, pressing my back against a metal cage, and rocked his fingers inside me, softly, more gently than the greedy thrust of his tongue.

There was something so honest and crude in the way he kissed, such a contrast to the delicate motion between my legs. The disciplined priest would forsake his own pleasure and finger me until I came. But the man would be needy and selfish like his kiss. He would hold me down with powerful arms, yank out his cock, and own me the way his tongue did. Ravenously. Convincingly. Unrestrained.